True Lust: The New MacBook Pro Will Ruin My Credit Card Balance While It Stains The Internet

Something wicked this way comes, folks. And it’s a bona fide danger to you, to PC makers, to credit card companies, and, most of all, it’s a danger to the internet.

What is it? A virus for Macs? Leaked credit card numbers? Nope. It’s worse. If you haven’t seen Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display, then I urge you not to. It’ll ruin your credit card balance and destroy the internet as we know it.

Another Trojan Horse From Apple

Color me stupid, because I’ve been down this road before. Apple launches a new must have product. I take a look and declare I must have one. It’s a disease, no?

In this case I read all about the MacBook Pro and the Retina display. Was that enough? No. I just had to see for myself what all the drooling was about.

So, I plunked the kids into the car, and headed for the nearest Apple Store to see if lust can be contracted from a slab of aluminum.

I love the Apple Store. It took awhile to get three free iPads in the children’s section, but once I did I grabbed an Apple Genius and said, “Hey Genius, watch these kids for a minute. I might buy something.”

Steve Jobs has trained them well. Everyone at Apple is so accommodating. Then I headed across the store to the line behind the MacBook Pro with Retina display. When it came my turn to drool, I did not disappoint.

This MacBook feels as if it was touched by Steve Jobs himself. It’s sleek and smooth and the screen us totally lust worthy. And that’s the problem. The Retina display is the reason you don’t want to look at a Retina display Mac until every Mac and PC in the world has one.

First, everything on the screen is crystal clear, sharp as my mom’s criticism of my hair, and, wonder of wonders, it makes the rest of the internet look bad. It’s that good.

Compare a MacBook Pro with Retina display side-by-side with any other Mac and there’s a striking visual difference. After a few minutes of web browsing and app chasing, moving over to a MacBook Air made me wince.

You know, the kind of wincing that occurs when the kindergarten principle calls and wants to talk about your daughter’s rebellious attitude. She’s only five.

In the screen-crippled MacBook models, photos look soft and fuzzy (a reason why Madonna doesn’t do interviews in HD). On the Retina display everything looks crystal clear, like reading make up ads in Cosmopolitan.

And that’s the problem. Typical web site graphics and images look crummy on Macs with non-Retina displays, and look just as bad on the Retina display MacBook Pro. Apple is forcing the internet to go all high resolution on its bad self.

Apple did the same kind of force feeding when it launched Safari. Love it or hate, Safari renders web pages beautifully– as they were meant to be. Mozilla followed suit and improved Firefox to match. Ditto for Google’s Chrome. They made web pages look good and that made Microsoft’s aging dinosaur of a browser, Internet Explorer, look bad. In fact, IE became so bad, that Microsoft did the unthinkable. They made it better.

Apple single handedly forced improvement upon both the internet and Microsoft. Guess what? They’re at it again. How long will it be before Wintel boxes have a Retina-like display? Along the way, web site developers and designers will have to figure out a way to up their game and add high res photos and graphics for high res Macs and PCs.

In the interim, here’s what else will happen. The economy will improve. Well, maybe Apple’s economy. The rest of us will see our credit card balances climb by a few thousand dollars as we struggle unsuccessfully to hold back our lust for aluminum and glass, and go deeper into debt, trying to justify helping out Apple through these difficult economic times.

Finally, you’ve been forewarned. The MacBook Pro’s Retina display is a game changer. It’s lust worthy, drool worthy, and credit worthy. If it was a guy it would be sponge worthy. To see one is to want one. To want one is to buy one. It’s the American way. Lust. Then buy. Then pay the consequences. But still enjoy the lust. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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About Alexis Kayhill

I'm a 20 year Mac user veteran, writer, photographer, wife, and mommy. I live in sunny San Diego with my husband, three children, two dogs, one mean old cat, and an SUV with a back seat full of beach sand. Read more of my articles here.

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